| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Clear Connection Between BO & The Weathermen
by Tom DeWeese
NewsWithViews.com
If you happened to see the Fox News, Megan Kelly (The Kelly File) interview with Bill Ayres, you witnessed a master of propaganda and misdirection, as Ayers tried to slip past Kelly’s direct questions. According to Ayres, he’s just a concerned citizen taking part in our democratic debate. How patriotic! The truth is, Ayres, his wife Bernadine Dohrn and the rest of the Weather Underground were and are true domestic terrorists out to destroy American society. Not only do they still roam our streets, but, in fact, live quite well off the society they professed to hate and sought to destroy. And the Weatherman’s ultimate victory, 40 years later, may just be Barack Obama.
Just before the election of Barack Obama in 2008, it was quite shocking to see that a forty-year old, seemingly forgotten radical group called “Weatherman” was getting so much attention. Of course, Obama denied any connection to old Weathermen. Here’s a quick history of the “Weatherman” and why it’s relevant to a president whose entire campaign relied on a call for an undefined “change.” Now, six years later, the change is coming much clearer into view. And it seems we now know which way the wind blows.
You’ve heard the famous names: Bill Ayres, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn and Jeff Jones, among others. Today, Ayres describes himself as a professor; Dohrn is his wife and a clinical law professor, Jeff Jones, predictably is an environmentalist and political consultant, and Mark Rudd is now a teacher — just normal Americans, living their lives. Really?
In 1962, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was born. It was a radical organization of college students. SDS quickly became the opposition to the Vietnam War. They organized demonstrations on college campuses across the nation to mobilize students to take “direct action” against “racism, poverty and war.” In 1963, SDS got involved in “community organizing,” teaming up with the Black Panthers, the Hispanic Young Lords, and other radical organizations.
By 1966, SDS was moving in a revolutionary Marxist direction. Their demonstrations and marches became violent clashes with police, many turning into riots. About the same time, SDS was joined by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), a self-styled Marxist- Leninist-Maoist party, dedicated to implementing communist ideology.
By 1969, a majority of SDS found the PLP’s strict Marxist ideology too restraining, hurting organizing and recruiting efforts. At the same time, SDS leaders were looking for a more long-term agenda to bring about a communist revolution in the United States. Simply fighting the war was too limiting. In June 1969, SDS held a raucous convention in which the PLP was tossed out of SDS and a new faction took control. That faction was called “Weatherman.” It issued a long, rambling manifesto detailing the future direction of the movement. The document was entitled “You Don’t Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows.” The title was taken from a Bob Dylan song.
The manifesto detailed Weatherman ideology and the means to create a Marxist revolution in “Amerika.” Some of its chapter titles include: “The Struggle for Socialist Self-Determination;” “Black Liberation Means Revolution;” “Anti-Imperialist Revolution and The United Front;” “The Revolutionary Youth Movement – Class Analysis;” and “Repression and Revolution.” The document called for a class war against America’s free market society. It talked of joining up with Marxist revolutions around the world, in China, in Cuba, and more. It called for the creation of a “Revolutionary Party.” Above all, it called for war against what Weatherman called “Amerika.” Why is that significant today? Because the authors of the document, the leaders of Weatherman, were Mark Rudd, Bill Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and others.
Weatherman’s first public act was what it called “Days of Rage.” It called on students to leave their classrooms and engage in three days of violence and street demonstrations. They smashed windows of businesses and cars, and attacked police lines. Mark Rudd himself was arrested in Chicago while leading the violence. The results of the three days of violence were 287 people arrested, 800 automobiles and 600 windows smashed. The combined bail was over $2 million.
In spite of the damage, Weatherman was disappointed with the turnout of demonstrators. They had hoped to bring thousands to the streets, rather than the three to five hundred who turned out. Mark Rudd and the other Weathermen concluded that white people weren’t ready to engage in revolution, as did their “black brothers” in the Black Panthers. To win, decided the Weathermen, whites had to share some of the cost of revolution by “picking up the gun.” To not do so was racist, they believed.
That decision led Weatherman leaders Ayres, Dohrn, Rudd and Jones to make the decision to declare war on “Imperialist Amerika” by going underground to foster direct violence against the state. They then became known as the “Weather Underground.”
During their reign of terror, the Weather Underground bombed corporate headquarters, burned ROTC buildings on college campuses, and even planted a bomb in the US Capitol building. They used anti-personnel bombs filled with nails, staples and other shrapnel designed to hurt and kill people. Several of those bombs were planted in police stations resulting in the murder of Police Sgt. Brian McDonnell in San Francisco; another officer was permanently maimed and two others were injured in that attack. A police informant, Larry Grathwohl, working inside the Weather Underground, reported that Bill Ayres planned the bombing and Bernadine Dohrn planted it. There were more such bombings in other cities. Later, Mark Rudd was the sole survivor of a bomb explosion that went off as he was building it in a Weather Underground safe house in New York. That bomb and more were to be placed in a dance hall at the Fort Dix Army base. They would have killed hundreds of soldiers and their dates.
As they engaged in their revolution, the Underground would, from time to time issue “Communiques,” to send messages to followers. In “Communique #1 From the Weather Underground,” it reads, in part, “Hello. This is Bernadine Dohrn. I’m going to read A DECLARATION OF A STATE OF WAR” (emphasis hers). In the document she warned, “Within the next fourteen days we will attack a symbol or institution of Amerikan injustice.” It was issued on May 21, 1970.
Read more at NWV’s:
